


I Won't Go Quietly

by AllegraBanner



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga, 亜人 - 三浦追儺 & 桜井画門 | Ajin - Miura Tsuina & Sakurai Gamon (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Ajin Edward Elric, Alternate Universe, Gen, Multi, Temporary Character Death, ajin au, don't need to know about ajin to read this, tags will be added as they come up in the plot
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-12
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:48:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24686407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AllegraBanner/pseuds/AllegraBanner
Summary: The Elric brothers will be known for the impossible in the future, but impossible their feats may well be, even they can't cheat death.Until, long before their other impossible feats, one of them does.-Alternatively: an AU in which Edward Elric does not sacrifice his arm for his brother; he sacrifices his head. Then it grows back.
Relationships: Alphonse Elric & Edward Elric, Edward Elric & Maes Hughes, Edward Elric & Roy Mustang, Edward Elric & The Truth, Edward Elric & Winry Rockbell
Comments: 24
Kudos: 92





	1. I'm Out of My Head

**Author's Note:**

> Fic title from Bury Me Face Down by grandson
> 
> Chapter title from The Wolf by SIAMÉS
> 
> A start to a story I've wanted to write for a while now. Sadly, updates will only come as and when I have motivation until my main bnha fic, we are on fire, is finished. For now, enjoy.

_Ed stared._

_He'd been staring for a while now, too scared to shout for his mother but at ease enough to sit on their front step, looking out at the rolling fields and far off buildings of dawn. The sky looked like it had been painted, with the rays shining through the trees and casting beautiful, long shadows across the yellowing grass and the gravel of their driveway. There was a gentle breeze blowing, playing with Ed's hair as he continued to stare out, out, all the way to the end of the sun- and shadow-pierced driveway and its dusty gravel._

_The thing he was staring at, he noticed, didn't have a shadow._

_It was… human enough, and it wasn't doing anything, at least not that Ed could see. He couldn't make it out properly from where he sat, but he saw that its hands and feet were a little too big, and that it was hunched over a little too much, and that despite it being so far away, it looked almost like a skeleton that had just spontaneously decided to start walking again._

_Except it was black, and it looked like it was decaying up and up and up, all the way to the clouds._

_And so Ed sat, staring out at the black figure as it slowly faded away with the dawn, giving way to the new day. He didn't rub his eyes, didn't yawn, didn't stretch or mess with his hair, just stayed still, sitting, waiting for the figure to appear again. It didn't._

_"Edward?" called a voice, his mother's, from inside the house. "Are you up already?"_

_"Yeah!" he replied, already turning to go inside. The figure he had seen lingered at the back of his mind, watching, but Ed decided not to think about it for now. His brother would be waiting to carry on with their alchemy, by now; they were both fairly early risers, though Ed more so than Al, and there wasn't a moment to waste!_

_He didn't see the black decay, working its way out from his skin as he re-entered the house._

-

Ed stared.

_Where was his brother?_

They were—he was—

"Alphonse?" The name sounded so out of place on his tongue, so _wrong_ with no one there to hear it.

And then he saw _it_.

And it wasn't their mother.

Ed's breath came in short gasps. No. No no no no this wasn't right, they'd done everything _given_ everything and it wasn't even possible? His brother wasn't there, _where was Alphonse_ —

His body moved on its own, dragging itself across bloodstained concrete and ignoring the wails of the thing they'd made and _oh God it didn't work and his brother **wasn't there**_.

The armour fell.

The circle was drawn.

Ed coughed blood.

"Give—" Another choking noise and a spatter of blood, mixing with howls of pain from the _thing_. "Give him _back_ ," he rasped, voice grating like sandpaper inside his own head.

He tried to kneel, but he only had one leg.

"He's _all I have_ ," Ed whispered. "He's all I have—" A clap. "—so give him _back_! HE'S MY _LITTLE BROTHER_!"

A headless, legless body fell to the floor.

-

White. Everywhere except himself and the huge gate behind him.

Ed was panicking. He came here for his brother, so _where was his brother_?

Then, he saw it.

It lingered out in the blank abyss, but much closer this time. It was sat on a non-existent floor, legs crossed, almost blank face turned towards him. Almost blank, that was, except for a wide, unsettling grin of black teeth to match its decaying black body.

Ed took a step back. "What are you?" he whispered, unable to tear his eyes away.

The figure did nothing.

"Where is Alphonse?" he tried.

The grin split across even more of its face, too big for a head that size, and Ed saw the whiteness trickling across its skeletal body, even as black continued to rise up from its every surface. Its new bleached grin was only marginally less terrifying than the black one. He could only watch in morbid fascination as, when only its head and torso were left, now just as white as its surroundings yet still bleeding dark dust in defiance of all the laws Ed knew of, it spoke.

" _ **He's… all I… have**_ ," it rattled. " ** _Give him… back_**."

Its grin was burned into Ed's mind as another abyss dragged him towards the endless darkness of the gate and sealed him inside.

-

Al's first thought was that they had _failed_.

His second thought was where was his body? He couldn't feel anything, not even his breath, not even the floor under his feet, not even the blood on his metal, hollow hands, not even the tears he knew should be streaming down his face, blurring the vision of two corpses strewn on the floor—

Two corpses.

_Two_ , when there should be only one.

Al may not have had a heart by then, but he swore his stopped when he saw it.

Ed's body.

His brother's _body_.

His brother's body with only one leg—his brother's _headless_ body—lying chest down in a pool of blood, a trail leading to the stump of his leg from where he had dragged himself to where he now lay. His brother had given his head to save him, Al realised, and the thought made him sick to the cavity where his stomach should be.

They had _failed_ , and they'd lost more that they could ever have gotten in return.

And then Ed's body _moved_.

His arms came round his sides and pushed as a black skeleton formed a new leg, a new skull, and dark ash rose off his skin and Al could only watch as his brother reanimated until suddenly he was standing, head only just at Al's chest plate as he swayed on the newly grown limb. When his brother started to fall, Al was all to quick to catch him.

"Brother," he said, startling at his new, echoing voice that reverberated throughout the armour. "What did we do?"

-

Winry frowned when she heard a knock on the door. Considering how late it was, it probably wasn't a customer, so either it was some poor traveller who got lost in the fields, or it was Ed and Al looking for something or other they had forgotten to stock up on. An infrequent occurrence, considering how they were, but it happened occasionally and neither Winry nor her Granny minded. They were family, after all.

She and Granny were sitting together, reading for a few minutes before bed as they sat opposite each other at the kitchen table. Granny also frowned when she heard the knock, marking her page and heading to the door. Winry was quick to follow.

"It's wet out there," Granny commented as she approached the door. "If it's the boys, they'll be staying the night. I'm not sending them back out in this."

Winry agreed, reaching for the doorknob before Granny could and opening the door. She was met with a sudden spray of water and a gust of wind, prompting her to close her eyes for a moment before taking in—

_Oh no_.

"My God…" Granny muttered, and Winry agreed.

It was Ed, and he was being carried in the arms of a giant metal suit, like the ones she knew were in the basement of the Elric household, and he looked terrible. Even after going out in the rain, his arms were covered in blood and his clothes, especially the front, looked like they were as well. His eyes were glassy, staring out at nothing, and Winry knew.

"Granny, Winry, I—" the armour began, and Winry's stomach sank. She knew that voice. "You have to help him!"

" _Al_?" she breathed, and she _knew_.

They'd tried to bring their mother back.

" _Help him!_ " Al insisted. "He's—I don't know what happened, but he won't respond!"

Winry looked at Ed, at his unseeing eyes, at the blood on his skin and clothes, at the unnerving cleanliness of his face and left leg, and she had a very bad feeling.

-

Later, standing invisibly in the hallway of the Rockbell household was an unsettling humanoid figure. Its feet and hands were too big, its grin was too wide, and its torso was nothing but a rib cage. It didn't cast a shadow, and the three who were awake in the house walked through it as if it wasn't there. It was unnaturally white, decaying with strangely black ash and fading to nothing.

No one heard it when it started to talk.

" ** _He's… my little… brother…_** "


	2. I Was Dead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Al," he whispered, scared of the answer and feeling a guilty sort of relieved. "Why is my leg back?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really enjoy writing the lore for this universe. There's just so much I want to do with this and I'm both really disappointed that I can't read it immediately and so glad that I get to write it out myself. Hope you enjoy what's to come!
> 
> Chapter title from I'm Gonna Show You Crazy by Bebe Rexha

It stood in the corner, face blank but for an ear-splitting grin that would have only been mildly disturbing had it actually had any ears. Or eyes. Or, like, half its torso, because Ed knew a lot about anatomy, and nothing that stick-like should be able to stand. As things were, it was, in Ed's humble eleven-year-old opinion, _fucking terrifying_.

"Brother!" called a tinny metal voice, and Ed took a second to push the figure to the back of his mind and process that his last-ditch transmutation had actually _worked_ , Al was _alive_ —

Until he actually looked at the source of the voice and found himself met with an armoured face, and he was reminded that it _didn't work_. They'd both lost things, important things. Ed's leg was gone now, he knew that, but what else did he sacrifice? He reached an arm over himself to lift the covers off, eyes flicking to Al still hovering over him.

Al—Ed knew what to expect when he heard Al's voice, but that didn't make it any easier for either of them. Even as he performed the transmutation, he'd prepared himself for the gut-wrenching possibility that it simply wouldn't work. Ed hated that he'd had to do that, and he hated how he felt a crushing weight being slowly loaded onto his shoulders, and he hated himself for his past stupidity, for daring to think that two desperate _children_ could do what no one had done before.

The sheets fell back, and Ed stared.

"Al," he whispered, scared of the answer and feeling a guilty sort of relieved. "Why is my leg back?"

The clinking of metal on metal indicated his brother's movements, but Ed couldn't bring himself to tear his eyes away from where his leg _shouldn't be_. "I don't know, brother. Do you not remember what happened after you lost it?"

His leg had been gone, there were no two ways about it—Al had seen that he'd lost his leg, he _remembered_ losing his leg, he still felt the excruciating pain and the panic of losing his brother, he—

**_"You were never supposed to see the Gate."_ **

Ed stopped breathing. He didn't dare interrupt the ghostly figure in the room. There was an unexplainable, incredibly powerful something emanating from it as soon as it spoke, and he heard Al move once again.

"Brother." Al's voice shook along with his armour. "Brother, what _is_ that?"

The figure paid no attention to Al, fixing it's unnatural smile in Ed's direction, bleeding black ash and growing more sparse by the second. **_"You are a vessel, Edward Elric. You are an overflow, and you should not be able to return to your source. Your kind are_ not _alchemists."_**

The brothers watched in horror as the figure glitched, flickering from black to white again in a split second. Ed was frozen.

**_"Why…is my leg… back?"_ **

" _Brother_ ," Al said. "Why does it know your name?"

Ed didn't get a chance to answer as it flickered once again, then shook as if struck by an earthquake before lifting its foot and taking a shaky step forward. He'd seen it at the Gate, and all those years ago in the distance about a month after their father left, back when there was still some hope that he would come back. Ed was _afraid_.

"What—what do you mean, 'my kind'?" Ed asked, trembling as an invisible pressure built on his chest. "What _are_ you?"

The figure tensed, and the floor beneath its feet splintered. **_"You are a vessel for souls not yet ready to face their Truth,"_** it said as it lifted wood-covered claws and moved closer to Ed and Al. **_"I am All—"_** Its foot came down again, making them flinch back from it. **_"—I am One—"_**

Suddenly, what remained of the figure's decaying body launched at Al, sharp claws screeching as they made contact with his breastplate and pierced straight through. Neither of the brothers could do anything to stop it.

Its bleached claws began to decay into black particles that rose more rapidly than before from its skeletal form, streaming towards the ceiling and gathering like storm clouds above its head, on which the eerie grin remained. It never turned away from Ed once during the whole exchange. It seemed to grin wider than ever before as it dissipated in front of them.

**_"—and most importantly,"_** it rattled, sounding like Al in ways that Ed didn't want to think about. _**"I am you."**_

And then, it was gone.

They didn't move for a while after that, both of them too shocked to think as they stared at the holes left in Al's armour, the only true proof that it had been real.

Ed was still reeling from the shock of his apparently firmly attached leg and promptly pushed aside the question of what the figure had meant by 'his kind' in favour of properly absorbing the knowledge that the Gate had crammed inside his head. He remembered an all-consuming darkness, and then he knew _everything_. Alchemic symbols, the composition of the earth in all areas of Amestris, how to change the pressure of air, and—

And, he realised, he knew what the figure was made of.

"Brother?" Al's voice brought him back to the room. His brother was still sitting by his bedside, hand raised over the holes in his chest and helmet facing in Ed's direction.

Ed hung his head. "I'm sorry, Al."

" _No!_ " Ed jumped. Al's exclamation startled him into looking back up, and if armour could emote then his brother had all but proven it. "You _can't_ be sorry, not about this. You just—I—you've given _everything_ for this and I'm alive because of you, so don't you _dare_ apologise, brother!"

"What did I sacrifice? There's nothing missing, so why—"

"Your leg was gone and still you were only thinking about me, not yourself!" Al put this hands none too gently on the side of where Ed was lying on what he only now noticed was a cot in one of the rooms at Winry's house. "You _died_ , brother—your head was gone and you _died_!"

"I—" Ed tried, but words just wouldn't form. He _died_? But then how was he still—

"I know it doesn't make sense and I _know_ it isn't fair but it _happened_ , Ed, and just because you came back doesn't mean everyone else will!" The true meaning of 'everyone else' went unsaid, but they both knew it meant their mother.

"Okay, Al. Okay." Ed reached out a hand for his brother and felt his heart wrench at the cold, metal touch. "We'll fix this. I promise you, we'll fix our mistake." He gave a dry laugh. "It doesn't make sense, you're right, but we'll figure out enough about the world so that it does."

"Okay, brother. We'll do it together," replied Al.

Ed smiled, then creased his brow. "Hey, Al, how long have I been out?"

Just as his brother was about to answer, the door flew open to reveal a windswept Winry, looking as if she'd just been rolled in machine oil. She was breathing hard, and as soon as her eyes locked on Ed, she visibly relaxed, but not for long. Straightening up, she wiped her forehead and settled one hand on her hip, the other still tightly gripped around a wrench.

"You've been out for two days, Ed, but we have bigger problems now," said Winry. "There are military officers on our doorstep."

-

Roy had come to the small town of Resembool in order to find an alchemist. Described as extremely illusive, Hohenheim had been sighted in many places over the years but settled down to have a family about a decade and a half ago. He and Hawkeye had nothing but the briefing, a single side of paper, to go off of, though they had done much more from much less in the past.

What Roy hadn't expected to find was the rotting remains of a humanoid form in the basement of an unsettlingly empty house, surrounded by too much blood and violent claw marks. Shrivelled eyeballs bored into his soul from a sunken face, just barely covered with skin that had already ripped to make way for the remnants of muscles beneath, greasy, bloody hair covering a grotesque set of decaying teeth. He knew exactly what this was.

"Human transmutation," Roy muttered under his breath. He heard Hawkeye inhale sharply before reaching for her gun. "It's dead, Lieutenant. Not like it was really alive to begin with."

Roy tugged on a glove and snapped, feeling the oxygen bend as he wished and turning away before he could smell the burning flesh of the monster that his craft had created. As he strode through the house, he took note of the photos hanging on the walls. Most were of a woman and two young boys, about six or seven at their oldest, smiling at the camera in various locations. There was no sign of the man Roy was looking for except for in one photograph, almost hidden behind two others on a shelf in the hallway next to the door.

It was of the woman and children from the other pictures, but in the top left, holding up the eldest child, was a man with golden blond hair, a beard that bordered on unruly, glasses on his face and an expression like he was trying desperately not to cry. Roy stared at it for a moment, not sure what to think, and then shook himself off. He had a mission to complete.

"Sir," called Hawkeye from a few feet beyond the door to the house. "There are footprints."

Roy stepped towards her with practised certainty, looking down at the tracks. They were large, too much so for them to belong to any of the house's apparent inhabitants, and they sunk deep into the recently-soaked earth. He looked up, seeing how they disappeared over the hills, large gaps between prints that indicated that whoever they belonged to had been running.

"Well," said Roy. "Let's see where they go."

-

If Roy hadn't expected the contents of the basement, then he certainly hadn't expected an old woman and a sign advertising 'Rockbell Automail' a few fields over from the house where they were told Hohenheim lived. She stood in front of them, hands on her hips and a pipe in her mouth, glasses reflecting the light from behind her.

"Hohenheim left years ago," she said, no small amount of venom in her tone. "And his wife died after that." She brought a hand up to her pipe, taking it between her fingers and breathing out a puff of smoke in Roy's face. "Those boys are all that's left."

Roy took a daring step forward in confrontation, and prepared to play his cards. "Ms Rockbell, my Lieutenant and I have searched the Elric household and found the boys absent. We believe that they are currently in your house and as an officer of the Amestrian military I request that you let us through."

The words felt cold in his mouth as the old woman looked Roy and Hawkeye up and down, gaze lingering noticeably on Hawkeye's gun and on Roy's gloves before stepping to the side of the door, eyes full of distrust.

Once inside, Roy saw Hawkeye look around the room and began to do so himself. It wasn't anything special—chairs, tables, a sofa, some photographs and blueprints for various prosthetics pinned to a cork board. It looked lived in, well loved and strangely comforting. Nothing out of the ordinary.

A soft clang of metal on metal approached from the door leading deeper into the house. All three heads turned to face it as the worn wooden door was pushed open by a young girl with long blonde hair, followed by a boy around the same age and a suit of armour. Roy blinked as he took in the new arrivals. The armour was tall, comparable to Major Armstrong, and filled with sharp edges and spikes. Its eyes glowed red—like fire, his mind supplied—but all of Roy's expectations were shattered when it spoke.

"We know why you're here." A boy. A young, pre-pubescent boy. Roy's heart sank.

The other boy, the one not in the armour, strode right up to Roy until they were only about a foot away. He looked an awful lot like a younger version of Hohenheim, with his hair and eye colour the same as Roy had seen in the one photograph of the man. 

Only, the boy was covered in blood, everywhere on his body and clothes except from his head to about halfway down his neck and—Roy glanced down to his feet—up to just below the line of his shorts on the left leg.

"We know what we did, and we're _not_ coming with you," the boy growled, glaring at him even as Hawkeye shifted into a stance that Roy knew would allow easier access to her gun.

" _Edward_ ," hissed the girl, reaching a hand out to grab the boy's bloody arm.

The boy, Edward, looked back at her, then shrugged her off as the armoured boy approached him. He turned back to Roy, but seemed as if he was looking through rather than at him, eyes wide and locked on something over Roy's shoulder. Edward stared at nothing for a long moment, then brought his gaze to his hands where his eyes grew even wider. Roy didn't know what to make of this—of any of this, really, so he did what he had trained himself to do.

He pretended.

"I won't be telling anyone about the basement of your house." The brothers, especially the armour, looked as if he had just offered them a rope to get out of a deep, dark hole. "I came looking for your father, but I see he's not around, so I'll offer you what I would have offered him—" And by God did Roy hate himself for this. "—a chance to join the State Alchemists and become a dog of the military. Not just anyone could survive a human transmutation, and I'm prepared to offer you a deal." Roy watched and winced internally as the boys looked at him. "As a State Alchemist, you'd have access to unlimited research materials at all state sanctioned libraries and a state funded budget to aid in your experiments."

"And why would we join the military for that?" Edward said, eyes dancing around the room.

"You could find a way to get your brother's body back."

At that, Edward froze.

Roy really, really hated himself for this. "Ask for Roy Mustang at Eastern Command when you're ready to talk about the exam."

He moved to leave, taking a single step toward the front door and indicating for Hawkeye to follow, when an invisible _something_ crashed into him from his right. It knocked him sideways, sent him stumbling into the door frame as he reached out an arm to balance himself. Roy shook his head, attempting to gather his senses, then cast his eyes behind him, brow furrowed.

Edward had his hand outstretched, one foot in front of the other and mouth open like he'd been about to call out. The elder Rockbell had her gaze pinned on the boy, one brow raised and pipe back in her mouth, but Roy couldn't recognise anything out of place.

Still frowning, he stole one last glance back into the house before following after Hawkeye away from the mess they had walked in on.

"Are you alright, Sir?" she asked in a hushed voice as they made their way down the steps on the porch.

Roy gave her a small smile. "I will be."

As they walked down the dirt road outside the Rockbell's home, Roy's thoughts began to wonder. The flesh and blood brother, Edward, hadn't had anything noticeable taken from him. Organs? No, he would have needed longer to recover and likely still been bedridden. Toes? Fingers? Too small of a price, not when the other brother lost his whole body. Memories? Roy doubted it. But then if it wasn't anything he could think of and had no apparent repercussions for the boy—

"What did he sacrifice?" he muttered, and Hawkeye flicked her gaze to him.

"I couldn't say, Sir."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tumblr is @ allegrabanner

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on Tumblr @ allegrabanner


End file.
